Good but ugly (buttons, menus...; FF icon is pretty, though). As you may or may not aware, the audience we're aiming for apparently never had much interest in quality. So, whether it _does_ matter... .
Bert Who thinks that Safari 2 is a pretty good browser
Part of FF marketshare comes from Macinosh users who at work are condemned to using a PC.
I sometimes use Firefox on my Macs when a site doesn't display properly, but I usually use Safari. Firefox doesn't look very pretty (I do like its icon, though). Similarly, the web app I work a lot with looks much worse than with Firefox (can we say ugly buttons and ugly menu's?)
Well, in the sense that PC users who are adventurous enough to try Firefox might also give Safari a try and perhaps stick with it, yes. But Apple has something Firefox doesn't: iTunes. Apple can reach millions of PC users who may never have heard of Firefox, but may give Safari a try because they like iTunes.
I don't cry any tears over a little loss of marketshare for Firefox. Let's rejoice the fact that the marketshare of standards-compliant browsers goes up. THAT's why it is important to eat away at IE's marketshare.
As I understand it, you should distinguish between hardware and software. Macs (i.e. hardware) are shipping for several years now capable of 64 bit. However, 64 bit has twice as much byte requirements, so it isn't always more efficient. Leopard will be capable of running both 64 bit apps and 32 bit apps at the same time.
So, this has nothing to do with running apps on 32 bit hardware. There's plenty 64 bit Mac hardware out there.
I'm an Apple fanboi, but I did notice that this phone has:
- triple band, amongst which GSM - allows for the use of a stylus - allows you install programs (but as Uncle Steve says: an application running fine on a computer doesn't have the interface to run on a tiny screen).
Now I'm a business user, but this phone isn't going to be mine. It will be the iPhone, as I can expect Apple to have the integration with the computer nailed. I might be tempted by the OpenMoko, with its higher resolution screen (surfing). Being fully open, it guarantees me that I can have the software I need )(if necessary adapted) to do what I need to do with it. And I even like its looks. The main drawback of the OpenMoko phone may be its limited memory. Keep an eye on this phone.
Bert Who wonders whether they knew they shouldn't call it an iPhone killer, because like iPod killers, your product is doomed if labeled as such.
I received a document my company had ordered from another company (PC only). The document came as a Word document. Word crashed opening this document. However, NeoOffice did open the document, and I (re)saved it as.doc. Then Word was able to open it too. It would also be nice of the NeoOffice people if they front out admitted that NeoOffice is sometimes more compatible with.doc than Word is.
The biggest disadvantage of NeoOffice is that it is slow to start-up. After that, it is fine (albeit ugly).
For the US: Now it is 20 years from the day of filing (like everywhere else), instead of 17 years from the date of grant.
Patent proprietors need to pay an annual fee (OK, not annual but every few years or so in the US), so there is an incentive to drop a patent in case it isn't worth it for the proprietor (and thus giving society a shot at trying to make money with the idea. Ask your government to increase these fees (saves you taxes, and inventions may enter the public domain quicker). If a proprietor cannot cough up these fees, he's not capable of earning enough money with the invention and shouldn't have a monopoly. Big incentive for the proprietor to find something who can, or to drop the thing.
Please note that nothing stops a company from trying to secure a license from the proprietor. Especially now the technology was developed for drying paint, the proprietor will probably have no problem with licensing for a use in a non-competing field.
Companies/people can start to innovate as soon as the patent is published (which is after 18 months, now even in the US). They can secure a (dependent) patent on their technology. Depending on the country you live in, it is more or less easy to get a license if you have a dependent patent.
20 years is short for pharmaceuticals, and long for other fields.
I believe you forgot to mention his fine understanding that stuff, such as roads, has to be paid for.
Bert Who doesn't like referenda, where a decision is made by the average wisdom of the voters Who doesn't like decisions being made by politicians who don't explain stuff to their electorate and, instead, perpetuate stupid cliches that government is bad, taxes are bad etc.
"How do you think they feel about having people watch their loved one die on You Tube? What about their rights?"
Interesting remark, giving rise to plenty of stuff that could be discusse.
So, what about the Twin Towers, the space shuttles, cool US guided missile attacks etc? Shouldn't these be shown, too? Did you turn the TV off, out of respect for the relatives? Advocate to others that they shouldn't watch?
Should the mere mention of such events or your contribution to this discussion then equally be forbidden? It shouldn't be restricted to video, or should it? Any mention would bring the bad thoughts up again, torturing the relatives.
I'm a patent agent and when I read the article contribution, the same argument sprang to mind and I looked whether someone had used this argument. I believe it has some validity, but unfortunately I also have a counter argument. A patent doesn't mean that nobody else could think of it, just that the ordinary person skilled in the art wouldn't think of it. And with the big FOSS community, there are surely sufficient people that stand out (i.e. aren't ordinary people skilled in the art), who also could come up with the idea.
Bert Who believes that getting rid of software patents is an uphill battle with the upcoming revision of the European patent law (in particular because of TRIPS, which contains an innocent looking but very nasty clause, that patents must be obtainable in any technical field).
Viruses live in cells. They can move from one cell to the adjacent next cell when the first infected cell lyses. Furthermore, even if a virus ends up in blood, would you catch it with a filter at a central point, or would the virus already have infected another cell by then before reaching the filter.
Blood doesn't like to be filtered. Damage to blood by hemodialysis is well known (which is why you everyone should be a donors, especially as the chance that you will actually be a donor is minuscule).
That is not to say that the technique cannot have any use, but in the area of blood filtration, I don't think so. Even for treating donated blood it may not be as useful as one might think, because the virus (if not in a blood cell), may be attached to a (red) blood cell.
With software, you can predict what you must to do get the result (you know what lines of code to write, and what the effect of those lines will be when executed). Not so with chemicals. Don't tell me you can take a look at the structure of a compound, and tell what activity it has.
Consumers want drugs to be free of problems like encountered with softenon. That requires a lot of testing. Lot of testing means lots of money. For which reason drugs come at a price. I"ve translated literally hundreds of patent on drugs against Alzheimer. You'd guess from that that the disease is just something from the history books. In effect, it represents the enormous amount of experiments done to discover chemicals with the desired activity, and that there is a big difference between activity in cell culture or even mice, and having a chemical that actually works in humans.
Bert I'm a patent agent and you have my vote that software shouldn't be patentable.
and then stop the supply to PC manufacturers. That would change the marketshare of Macs drastically. In a more mild for, they could sell the chips at 10% more, and use that money to sell their own computers for 30% less. Both purchases can be easily financed using options on Microsoft (put/call I don't know, the ones where you make money if the share value drops).
HDs are big these days. Why not sell both Windows and Linux on it? I think it would be commercially way more attractive to customers. And if Window's license doesn't allow that, EU pay notice and start your investigation!
Bert I'm happy with the Ubuntu, although I'd rather have it as a laptop (space!)
You guys are all smarter than I am. As to step size I may contribute. Given that the marble falls by 0.5 m v^2, the step size should be perhaps smaller at the beginning than at the end.
Breakthroughs don't get big money funding, the only exception I know is fusion technology, and like 30 years ago, we still have 30 years to wait before it is believed to be economical. Let's hope they are right this time.
It is nice if there is a single missing cause, and if we find and solve it we have cost-effective solar power. It is very rare for technology to work that way. Take chips. The transistor on a chip was a breakthrough, sure, but it took an awful long time to get me a 3 GHz Mac. All the time I've been buying technology that wasn't that good. Do you really think that if no one had bought computers until now, that we could have bought the computer with its current specs?
Solar has to follow the path of wind energy. Slowly we've been learning more about the wind, improving various technologies (materials, shapes, transmission) and scaling up, as a result of which the cost of wind power comes down. This path is only possible if people are willing to pay a little more to allow companies to earn money. How would investors react if a company said it would start investing $500M in research without certainty that a break through would be made?
Old technology is the status quo, has had decades to improve. It is the old (coal etc.) that is the dead-end technology.
Not willing to invest in the best available clean electricity is like not willing to sow to harvest. Betting on one horse is also not wise.
Here in the Netherlands, over a decade ago, I've pestered electricity companies to allow me to pay MORE for my electricity, if only they generated it more cleanly. This has actually been introduced (interestingly first by the "dirty Joe" of the electricity companies for a reason I'd overlooked: They didn't care about so much about the environment as well as making money, and there was a market there of environmentally conscious consumers willing to pay a bit more). Green electricity is a success here, I think, especially since the tax break for green electricity. Most of the additional money is spent on wind power and biomass, some of it on solar. For each of those technologies goes, what is currently is being installed is better than what was installed 5 years ago. If we'd waited for 5 years and done nothing, we couldn't have installed the current state of the art technology because it wouldn't have been developed and put to practice.
Personally I get a bit squeezy in the stomach reading comments like yours. Old technology is slowly but steadily running us in big trouble, so some action should be taken. And taking action timely and gradually is generally better than a dropping-from-airplane-without-parachute-but-in-de nial-attitude. No one is asking you to pay $0.42 per kWh, but offering nothing is, well, disappointing.
That is not what the responses here on./ are limited to. E.g. it is stated that - the price has increased b/o Windows, (if it is still available with Linux?) - M$ wants to kill OLPC (why? the more people run Windows instead of Linux, the merrier they are)
I don't like MS one bit, but I do believe that the MS bashing here is uncalled for in this case. I'd love to see Linux grow (marketshare matters), and with a choice countries may opt for Windows even though the surfing etc. could as well be done under Linux. This doesn't help weaning the world off Windows. These countries will pay later for their decision, when the Windows-skilled people that come out of it will require PCs with paid-for Windows.
If OLPC got in the hands of developers, edu OS edu software could be developed that would mitigate the attraction of OLPC running Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Good but ugly (buttons, menus...; FF icon is pretty, though). As you may or may not aware, the audience we're aiming for apparently never had much interest in quality. So, whether it _does_ matter ... .
Bert
Who thinks that Safari 2 is a pretty good browser
the web app looks much worse with Firefox
Part of FF marketshare comes from Macinosh users who at work are condemned to using a PC.
I sometimes use Firefox on my Macs when a site doesn't display properly, but I usually use Safari. Firefox doesn't look very pretty (I do like its icon, though). Similarly, the web app I work a lot with looks much worse than with Firefox (can we say ugly buttons and ugly menu's?)
Bert
Well, in the sense that PC users who are adventurous enough to try Firefox might also give Safari a try and perhaps stick with it, yes. But Apple has something Firefox doesn't: iTunes. Apple can reach millions of PC users who may never have heard of Firefox, but may give Safari a try because they like iTunes.
I don't cry any tears over a little loss of marketshare for Firefox. Let's rejoice the fact that the marketshare of standards-compliant browsers goes up. THAT's why it is important to eat away at IE's marketshare.
Bert
As I understand it, you should distinguish between hardware and software. Macs (i.e. hardware) are shipping for several years now capable of 64 bit. However, 64 bit has twice as much byte requirements, so it isn't always more efficient. Leopard will be capable of running both 64 bit apps and 32 bit apps at the same time.
So, this has nothing to do with running apps on 32 bit hardware. There's plenty 64 bit Mac hardware out there.
Bert
I'm an Apple fanboi, but I did notice that this phone has:
- triple band, amongst which GSM
- allows for the use of a stylus
- allows you install programs (but as Uncle Steve says: an application running fine on a computer doesn't have the interface to run on a tiny screen).
Now I'm a business user, but this phone isn't going to be mine. It will be the iPhone, as I can expect Apple to have the integration with the computer nailed. I might be tempted by the OpenMoko, with its higher resolution screen (surfing). Being fully open, it guarantees me that I can have the software I need )(if necessary adapted) to do what I need to do with it. And I even like its looks. The main drawback of the OpenMoko phone may be its limited memory. Keep an eye on this phone.
Bert
Who wonders whether they knew they shouldn't call it an iPhone killer, because like iPod killers, your product is doomed if labeled as such.
That will make HIS computer compatible, not the ones of his clients etc. His points remains perfectly valid. Not bad for a lawyer.
Bert
I received a document my company had ordered from another company (PC only). The document came as a Word document. Word crashed opening this document. However, NeoOffice did open the document, and I (re)saved it as .doc. Then Word was able to open it too. It would also be nice of the NeoOffice people if they front out admitted that NeoOffice is sometimes more compatible with .doc than Word is.
The biggest disadvantage of NeoOffice is that it is slow to start-up. After that, it is fine (albeit ugly).
Bert
For the US: Now it is 20 years from the day of filing (like everywhere else), instead of 17 years from the date of grant.
Patent proprietors need to pay an annual fee (OK, not annual but every few years or so in the US), so there is an incentive to drop a patent in case it isn't worth it for the proprietor (and thus giving society a shot at trying to make money with the idea. Ask your government to increase these fees (saves you taxes, and inventions may enter the public domain quicker). If a proprietor cannot cough up these fees, he's not capable of earning enough money with the invention and shouldn't have a monopoly. Big incentive for the proprietor to find something who can, or to drop the thing.
Please note that nothing stops a company from trying to secure a license from the proprietor. Especially now the technology was developed for drying paint, the proprietor will probably have no problem with licensing for a use in a non-competing field.
Companies/people can start to innovate as soon as the patent is published (which is after 18 months, now even in the US). They can secure a (dependent) patent on their technology. Depending on the country you live in, it is more or less easy to get a license if you have a dependent patent.
20 years is short for pharmaceuticals, and long for other fields.
Bert
I believe you forgot to mention his fine understanding that stuff, such as roads, has to be paid for.
Bert
Who doesn't like referenda, where a decision is made by the average wisdom of the voters
Who doesn't like decisions being made by politicians who don't explain stuff to their electorate and, instead, perpetuate stupid cliches that government is bad, taxes are bad etc.
"How do you think they feel about having people watch their loved one die on You Tube? What about their rights?"
Interesting remark, giving rise to plenty of stuff that could be discusse.
So, what about the Twin Towers, the space shuttles, cool US guided missile attacks etc? Shouldn't these be shown, too? Did you turn the TV off, out of respect for the relatives? Advocate to others that they shouldn't watch?
Should the mere mention of such events or your contribution to this discussion then equally be forbidden? It shouldn't be restricted to video, or should it? Any mention would bring the bad thoughts up again, torturing the relatives.
Bert
First question: What's the story with your last name, Mr. Professor.
Bert
I've always wanted a word processor where backspace and delete would show Packman eating away the letters.
Bert
I'm a patent agent and when I read the article contribution, the same argument sprang to mind and I looked whether someone had used this argument. I believe it has some validity, but unfortunately I also have a counter argument. A patent doesn't mean that nobody else could think of it, just that the ordinary person skilled in the art wouldn't think of it. And with the big FOSS community, there are surely sufficient people that stand out (i.e. aren't ordinary people skilled in the art), who also could come up with the idea.
Bert
Who believes that getting rid of software patents is an uphill battle with the upcoming revision of the European patent law (in particular because of TRIPS, which contains an innocent looking but very nasty clause, that patents must be obtainable in any technical field).
Viruses live in cells. They can move from one cell to the adjacent next cell when the first infected cell lyses. Furthermore, even if a virus ends up in blood, would you catch it with a filter at a central point, or would the virus already have infected another cell by then before reaching the filter.
Blood doesn't like to be filtered. Damage to blood by hemodialysis is well known (which is why you everyone should be a donors, especially as the chance that you will actually be a donor is minuscule).
That is not to say that the technique cannot have any use, but in the area of blood filtration, I don't think so. Even for treating donated blood it may not be as useful as one might think, because the virus (if not in a blood cell), may be attached to a (red) blood cell.
Bert
With one smoke cloud equivalent to one bit, it might not be as popular as one might think.
Bert
Who is considering encryption in the Navaho language
"You need to start thinking for yourself for once and not believe that everything you read is true."
How about if you eat your own medicine?
Bert
Despite of being bombarded for years with adverts for women sanitary pads, I've yet to buy my first package.
Bert
Who wonders whether Econ201 teaches about the monthy fee one pays for cable.
With software, you can predict what you must to do get the result (you know what lines of code to write, and what the effect of those lines will be when executed). Not so with chemicals. Don't tell me you can take a look at the structure of a compound, and tell what activity it has.
Consumers want drugs to be free of problems like encountered with softenon. That requires a lot of testing. Lot of testing means lots of money. For which reason drugs come at a price. I"ve translated literally hundreds of patent on drugs against Alzheimer. You'd guess from that that the disease is just something from the history books. In effect, it represents the enormous amount of experiments done to discover chemicals with the desired activity, and that there is a big difference between activity in cell culture or even mice, and having a chemical that actually works in humans.
Bert
I'm a patent agent and you have my vote that software shouldn't be patentable.
and then stop the supply to PC manufacturers. That would change the marketshare of Macs drastically. In a more mild for, they could sell the chips at 10% more, and use that money to sell their own computers for 30% less. Both purchases can be easily financed using options on Microsoft (put/call I don't know, the ones where you make money if the share value drops).
Bert
HDs are big these days. Why not sell both Windows and Linux on it? I think it would be commercially way more attractive to customers. And if Window's license doesn't allow that, EU pay notice and start your investigation!
Bert
I'm happy with the Ubuntu, although I'd rather have it as a laptop (space!)
You guys are all smarter than I am. As to step size I may contribute. Given that the marble falls by 0.5 m v^2, the step size should be perhaps smaller at the beginning than at the end.
Bert
Breakthroughs don't get big money funding, the only exception I know is fusion technology, and like 30 years ago, we still have 30 years to wait before it is believed to be economical. Let's hope they are right this time.
e nial-attitude. No one is asking you to pay $0.42 per kWh, but offering nothing is, well, disappointing.
It is nice if there is a single missing cause, and if we find and solve it we have cost-effective solar power. It is very rare for technology to work that way. Take chips. The transistor on a chip was a breakthrough, sure, but it took an awful long time to get me a 3 GHz Mac. All the time I've been buying technology that wasn't that good. Do you really think that if no one had bought computers until now, that we could have bought the computer with its current specs?
Solar has to follow the path of wind energy. Slowly we've been learning more about the wind, improving various technologies (materials, shapes, transmission) and scaling up, as a result of which the cost of wind power comes down. This path is only possible if people are willing to pay a little more to allow companies to earn money. How would investors react if a company said it would start investing $500M in research without certainty that a break through would be made?
Old technology is the status quo, has had decades to improve. It is the old (coal etc.) that is the dead-end technology.
Not willing to invest in the best available clean electricity is like not willing to sow to harvest. Betting on one horse is also not wise.
Here in the Netherlands, over a decade ago, I've pestered electricity companies to allow me to pay MORE for my electricity, if only they generated it more cleanly. This has actually been introduced (interestingly first by the "dirty Joe" of the electricity companies for a reason I'd overlooked: They didn't care about so much about the environment as well as making money, and there was a market there of environmentally conscious consumers willing to pay a bit more). Green electricity is a success here, I think, especially since the tax break for green electricity. Most of the additional money is spent on wind power and biomass, some of it on solar. For each of those technologies goes, what is currently is being installed is better than what was installed 5 years ago. If we'd waited for 5 years and done nothing, we couldn't have installed the current state of the art technology because it wouldn't have been developed and put to practice.
Personally I get a bit squeezy in the stomach reading comments like yours. Old technology is slowly but steadily running us in big trouble, so some action should be taken. And taking action timely and gradually is generally better than a dropping-from-airplane-without-parachute-but-in-d
Bert
That is not what the responses here on ./ are limited to.
n te_olpc.html#more
E.g. it is stated that
- the price has increased b/o Windows, (if it is still available with Linux?)
- M$ wants to kill OLPC (why? the more people run Windows instead of Linux, the merrier they are)
Fortunately Wired seems to have some good news: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/04/negropo
Bert
I don't like MS one bit, but I do believe that the MS bashing here is uncalled for in this case. I'd love to see Linux grow (marketshare matters), and with a choice countries may opt for Windows even though the surfing etc. could as well be done under Linux. This doesn't help weaning the world off Windows. These countries will pay later for their decision, when the Windows-skilled people that come out of it will require PCs with paid-for Windows.
If OLPC got in the hands of developers, edu OS edu software could be developed that would mitigate the attraction of OLPC running Windows.
Bert
Macintosh user